Re: Revenue for OA journals

From: Ahmed Hindawi <ahmed.hindawi_at_HINDAWI.COM>
Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2007 22:33:48 +0200

I understand MedKnow is under no obligation to provide any information,
so anything they provide is appreciated. However, I wouldn't call the
information provided detailed by any means.

I would be interested, among many others I guess, if any information can
be provided on the scale of such revenues of MedKnow. For example, what
is the total revenue from "Advertisement in online version" does MedKnow
get? Even a rough estimation would be very interesting to know.

What is "Reprint sales"? Is it for 100 reprints or so sold to authors or
tens of thousands of reprints sold to pharmaceutical companies? How much
is generated per article on average from these sales?

What is "Royalty"?

What is the "Membership fee for association"?! MedKnow is a commercial
publisher, right? So why is its journals get revenue from membership
fees for association?

What is the print distribution of the MedKnow journals? Is this print
distribution mainly in India or is worldwide. I am puzzled as of why a
library will buy a print copy of a freely available journal online. Are
these libraries in places where there is not good Internet connectivity?
Are they buying them to conscientiously supporting open access? Or is it
out of a national request or mandate to support national journals in
India? Would libraries in other places of the world do that same (I
don't think so). Is it because those libraries are worried about the
archiving of these journals! Would this scale? Will it continue in the
future as libraries in India become more comfortable with online only
resources?

We are being told a commercial publisher (i.e., a publisher who does
have to employee a number of staff to run a publishing operation and
provide them with the infrastructure they need to do their job with all
the associated costs) can do that without charging the authors or their
institutes or research funders and without charging the readers or their
institutes or research funders. I for one will need a bit more
information to see how this works.

Those publishers who their APCs are the main source of income are much
easier to analyze since these APCs are advertised. Yes, there might be
discounts and waivers, there might be institutional memberships, but at
least one can get a very good idea of the revenues.

Ahmed Hindawi

> Forwarded from Dr D K Sahu, MedKnow Publications, Mumbai, India
>
> Dear All
>
> We do not get grants from any governmental organizations / trust. At the
> same time we do not charge the authors for submission or processing of
> articles.
>
> For all our journals following are the sources of income
>
> 1. Advertisement in print edition
> 2. Subscription to print
> 3. Advertisement in online version
> 4. Reprint sales
> 5. Membership fee for association
> 6. Royalty
>
> The proportion of each of these for various journals is variable. E.g. a
> journal with smaller print circulation is benefited more from the print
> subscriptions compared to a journal with larger circulation which
> attracts more number of print advertisements. Few journals (e.g. JPGM,
> jpgmonline.com) gets as much as 60% of its income from web advertisements.
>
> Though funding an OA journal in future may be difficult, there are
> avenues for increasing revenue (such as online advertisements, reprints)
> and cutting cost (paper-less peer review, online only publication).
>
> In spite of providing immediate free access, we are not losing revenue
> from other sources specially print subscriptions. In fact, the print
> subscription has increased over last 5 years and has become main source
> of revenue for many of the smaller journals which have also started
> profiting now.
>
> Regards
>
> DK Sahu
Received on Sat Mar 17 2007 - 21:20:54 GMT